PvE Analysis

So I've been slowly collating this information when I find time to work on it. This is only one part of the whole when it comes to hunting, as I'm not picking up things like battlerage, critical hits, options for dealing with shielding, entanglement and broken arms, nor your survival capabilities and mobility. Take a look, use it if it helps, have some discussion, or make your own tests with a relevant basis for comparison. Enjoy!

Points of note - Doublewhirl, Slaughter, Combination, Bop, Bite do NOT scale with main stat

Layout - Per hit damage / modified bal or eq time with nimble or aldar and quick-witted / base bal or eq / calculated damage per second

Disclaimer - Due to the nature of attacks being represented in percentages, there is room for the final percentages being marginally off. Balance and equilibrium times harvested as best as I could using serverside timestamps, there is variance in the figures so numerous samples were taken and a best fit concluded.

No monk figures? Sorry, haven't gotten to them yet. I also can't do factional classes outside of Ashtan.

This test subject is a tough one, I saw how Mindshell spent lengthy amount of time to get these figures, and also, confirming them again and again for consistency. Not to mention, these little girls die on crit, often having to wait for respawn to continue. @Mindshell monster rocks.

When did you get the dragon numbers? What you have is pretty far off what I have.

I'm not at home so this isn't exact, but I have Thoth's being around 15% faster than gut, and gut being 15% faster than incantation.

Not having crits included would throw off the benefit of the faster hitting attacks right? Maybe it is an artifact of the data?

The only benefits to faster attacks, as it relates to crits, is less overkill when they're low health. Offset somewhat by the fact you'll have more chance to crit (and thus overkill) on low health mobs since you bring them lower before the kill.

Confirms that at that strength value it's more effective for SnB to hunt with a shortsword due to the non-scaling of combination. Keep in mind that weaponmastery has swordplay, which I should've mentioned was a factor in my shortsword data, so it's also outperforming longsword and broadsword basic attacks regardless of strength.

Confirms that at that strength value it's more effective for SnB to hunt with a shortsword due to the non-scaling of combination. Keep in mind that weaponmastery has swordplay, which I should've mentioned was a factor in my shortsword data, so it's also outperforming longsword and broadsword basic attacks regardless of strength.

Makes me wonder if it's just the lack of scaling that creates the issue.

Would it be possible to check 12 str shortsword and 12 str, say, dsl? To compare non-scaled damage.

Did you submit a bug on the lack of scaling? I can if not. My hunting partner was considering SnB but in light of this, that seems like a terrible idea.

When did you get the dragon numbers? What you have is pretty far off what I have.

I'm not at home so this isn't exact, but I have Thoth's being around 15% faster than gut, and gut being 15% faster than incantation.

I don't have Mindshell's stats for dragon, but at 19 strength, iirc, Thoth's is roughly half of gut damage at >50% of the speed (1.8 vs 3). And gut seemed to scale better with +str in all the testing we did, leading to a doubling of damage at 23 in less than 2x the time. Been a while since Thoth's > gut.

You could ask Penwize, if he were still around. He and I looked into a while back when they scaled it back, probably a year or so ago, and with my base strength stats gut > thoth, and with his +str stats gut >> thoth.

Well, you're obviously a power ranger, so rest of us can't compare. But test it up when you get a chance and post what you find. I don't have data in front of my face, but you'd need to see a pretty noticeable damage profile with Thoth's to overcome the 1.8 to 3.0 balance times. From all my previous testing (which is a bit out of date, being a year old) Thoth's at 19 was right below 50% of gut, and as strength went up the distance grew larger.

Confirms that at that strength value it's more effective for SnB to hunt with a shortsword due to the non-scaling of combination. Keep in mind that weaponmastery has swordplay, which I should've mentioned was a factor in my shortsword data, so it's also outperforming longsword and broadsword basic attacks regardless of strength.

Makes me wonder if it's just the lack of scaling that creates the issue.

Would it be possible to check 12 str shortsword and 12 str, say, dsl? To compare non-scaled damage.

Did you submit a bug on the lack of scaling? I can if not. My hunting partner was considering SnB but in light of this, that seems like a terrible idea.

Looking to finish collating the high end currently, comparing base values is the next logical step though.

Not entirely sure what to make of this other than lesserform class is impacting dragon hunting. I also don't remember which class I was when I first tested this.

Lightning-quick, you jab a little girl with Thoth's fang.[Rage]: +3.8. Total: 3.8A little girl is a humble-looking creature.She has 70% health remaining.A little girl has visited the Halls of Death recently.

..

lesserformed to shaman

..

class switched to runewarden

..

dragonformed again

..

A little girl is a humble-looking creature.She has 70% health remaining.A little girl has visited the Halls of Death recently.Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.Lightning-quick, you jab a little girl with Thoth's fang.[Rage]: +3.8. Total: 3.8A little girl is a humble-looking creature.She has 45% health remaining.A little girl has visited the Halls of Death recently.

--Regarding jab balance time, if you've got test server at 1.8 then I'm happy to use that. I expect there to be some margin for error in my results.

First, the balance times. After taking over a hundred samples of both, given that there's some variance no matter how many times you do it, the average balance time for Thoth's was 1.87187 seconds, and gut was 2.9301. Strength is 19.

Testing on multiple subjects, my results were (I forget which denizens, so I'll just call them Cases):

Case 1: Gut, barely

Thoth's: 2.5 @ 1.87187 = 1.3356 %/sGut: 4.0 @ 2.9301 = 1.3651 %/s

Case 2: Gut

Thoth's: 2.9 @ 1.87187 = 1.5493 %/sGut: 4.8 @ 2.9301 = 1.6382 %/s

Case 3: Gut, barely

Thoth's 9.5 @ 1.87187 = 5.0751 %/sGut: 14.9 @ 2.9301 = 5.0852 %/s

Case 4: Thoth's, barely

Thoth's: 4.08 @ 1.87187 = 2.1796 %/sGut: 6.36 @ 2.9301 = 2.1706 %/s

Case 4: Gut

Thoth's: 3.307 @ 1.87187 = 1.7671 %/sGut: 5.429 @ 2.9301 = 1.8527 %/s

Case 5: Gut, barely

Thoth's: 8.294 @ 1.87187 = 4.43 %/sGut: 13 @ 2.9301 = 4.44 %/s

Case 6: Thoth's

Thoth's: 22.8 @ 1.87187 = 12.18 %/sGut: 35.0 @ 2.9301 = 11.945 %/s

Case 7: Thoth's

Thoth's: 24.57 @ 1.87187 = 13.127 %/sGut: 38.1 @ 2.9301 = 13.003 %/s

Tried to test a wide variety, with as many samples as I could possibly get, and as exact as I could possibly get, but that's what I came up with. That's at 19 strength, but to me it looks damn closer than I thought it would be. The fact that Thoth's seemed to pull ahead on the lower health pools, given that that's more accurate, leads me to believe that it might be faster than gut, only if by a little bit. My conclusion is, at 19 strength at least, use Thoth's if you have it, but it's not worth buying it for bashing if you don't already have it.

I'm not sure how it would fluctuate as you go up in strength.

EDIT: Given the bug potential talked about above, this was going Dform from Serpent, going back down to Serpent, Dforming again.

First, the balance times. After taking over a hundred samples of both, given that there's some variance no matter how many times you do it, the average balance time for Thoth's was 1.87187 seconds, and gut was 2.9301. Strength is 19.

Testing on multiple subjects, my results were (I forget which denizens, so I'll just call them Cases):

Case 1: Gut, barely

Thoth's: 2.5 @ 1.87187 = 1.3356 %/sGut: 4.0 @ 2.9301 = 1.3651 %/s

Case 2: Gut

Thoth's: 2.9 @ 1.87187 = 1.5493 %/sGut: 4.8 @ 2.9301 = 1.6382 %/s

Case 3: Gut, barely

Thoth's 9.5 @ 1.87187 = 5.0751 %/sGut: 14.9 @ 2.9301 = 5.0852 %/s

Case 4: Thoth's, barely

Thoth's: 4.08 @ 1.87187 = 2.1796 %/sGut: 6.36 @ 2.9301 = 2.1706 %/s

Case 4: Gut

Thoth's: 3.307 @ 1.87187 = 1.7671 %/sGut: 5.429 @ 2.9301 = 1.8527 %/s

Case 5: Gut, barely

Thoth's: 8.294 @ 1.87187 = 4.43 %/sGut: 13 @ 2.9301 = 4.44 %/s

Case 6: Thoth's

Thoth's: 22.8 @ 1.87187 = 12.18 %/sGut: 35.0 @ 2.9301 = 11.945 %/s

Case 7: Thoth's

Thoth's: 24.57 @ 1.87187 = 13.127 %/sGut: 38.1 @ 2.9301 = 13.003 %/s

Tried to test a wide variety, with as many samples as I could possibly get, and as exact as I could possibly get, but that's what I came up with. That's at 19 strength, but to me it looks damn closer than I thought it would be. The fact that Thoth's seemed to pull ahead on the lower health pools, given that that's more accurate, leads me to believe that it might be faster than gut, only if by a little bit. My conclusion is, at 19 strength at least, use Thoth's if you have it, but it's not worth buying it for bashing if you don't already have it.

I'm not sure how it would fluctuate as you go up in strength.

EDIT: Given the bug potential talked about above, this was going Dform from Serpent, going back down to Serpent, Dforming again.

Going from memory, Serpent has one of the better modifiers (it's not great at tanking unartied), so if the bug (if there is one) is only affecting jab, and not the dragon attacks, then thoth's would appear to be better than it actually should be.